Common carriers, such as passenger airlines, bus lines, and train lines, often contain multiple seats in one or more cabins. Subject to their compliance with applicable safety regulations, seating arrangements may vary from carrier to carrier. Whereas passengers may prefer fewer seats per cabin to increase leg-room, privacy, or other factors associated with decreased seat density, common carrier operators may prefer greater seats per cabin to increase revenue per transport. Optimizing, or at least enhancing, both passenger comfort and revenue generation is a significant issue in cabin design and layout.
In the case of business class cabin design, various parameters, such as passenger comfort, bed and seat dimensions, living space, direct access to the aisle, and angle of the bed surface to the cabin floor are additional considerations that influence cabin seating arrangements. For example, for passenger comfort, it is desirable to achieve a horizontal bed surface when in transport or flight. In many cases, a horizontal bed surface is achieved via a foot well that is positioned in a back surface of the next-front passenger seat. Thus, when each passenger seat is positioned in a horizontal position, the passenger seat surface joins with the foot well to form a horizontal bed surface for the passenger.
To provide passengers with an enhanced feeling of privacy, each passenger seat may be partially surrounded by a privacy shell and/or a side monument, which allows the passenger to use the passenger seat in any position without interfering with other passenger seat. In many cases, the overall footprint of the passenger seat unit is larger than the seat in the horizontal position, leaving open space within the passenger seat unit that could otherwise be utilized for additional bed dimensions.
Existing designs have included bed extensions attached to the passenger seat itself, which are designed to extend into the open space to provide additional bed dimensions. However, due to the passenger seat configuration and dimensions, such designs are limited in the amount of space that can be covered with a bed extension that is attached to the passenger seat and stows/deploys from the passenger seat.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a design for a bed extension that fully utilizes the amount of open space available within the passenger seat unit when the passenger seat is in the horizontal position, which is not limited in dimension by the configuration of the passenger seat.